Gattis, Ryan, All Involved

A propulsive and ambitious novel as electrifying as The Wire, from a writer hailed as the West Coast’s Richard Price—a brutal and mesmerizing epic of crime and opportunity, race, revenge, and loyalty, set in the chaotic streets of South Central L.A. in the wake of one of the most notorious, incendiary, and racially charged trials of the 1990s, involving the severe beating of a civilian black man and three white LAPD officers.

At 3:15 p.m. on April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted two Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with using excessive force to subdue civilian Rodney King, and failed to reach a verdict on the same charges involving a third officer. Less than two hours later, the city of LA, a powder keg of racial tension, exploded in violence as people took to the streets in a terrifying orgy of rioting that lasted six days.

In 144 hours, sixty lives were lost. And then there were the murders outside of active rioting sites, committed by gangbangers who used the lawlessness of a city on fire to viciously settle scores.

A gritty and cinematic work of sourced fiction, All Involved vividly recreates this turbulent and terrifying time through the stories of six interconnected lives caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Focusing on a sliver of Los Angeles during the riots ignored by the media, Ryan Gattis paints a portrait of modern America itself—laying bare our history, our prejudices, and our complexities. Resonant with the voices of former gang members, firefighters, nurses, ex-CHP, grown-up graffiti kids, and others who survived that infamous time, All Involved is a literary tour de force that catapults this edgy writer into the ranks of such legendary talents as George Pelacanos, Dennis Lehane, and Hubert Selby, Jr